Cornell Council for the Arts

I: Making Art  

Poems of Sylvia Plath and Joanie MacKowski: Reading by Joanie Mackowski, Assistant Professor, Creative Writing Program, Cornell University

Performance of Ned Rorem’s Ariel for voice, piano, and clarinet, based on suicide poems of Slyvia Plath, by guest artists:
Judith Kellock, soprano, Associate Professor, Music, Cornell University
Frank Daykin, pianist, Faculty, Chamber Music Conference/Composers Forum of the East,       Bennington, Vermont
Armand Ambrosini, clarinetist, Assistant Professor, Music, University of Oklahoma

Performance of Musical Genius and Psychiatric Illness by Dr. Richard Kogan, Director, Medicine  and Music Initiative, Weill Cornell Medical College

II: Observing Art  

2:30 pm PERFORMANCE
Interactive performance by Bobby McFerrin, vocalist, conductor, Grammy Award winner and co-host of 2009 documentary “The Music Instinct,” based on musician-scientist Daniel Levitin’s book, "This Is Your Brain On Music."

3:30 pm PANEL DISCUSSION
Moderator: Dr. David Skorton, President, Cornell University, Weill Cornell Medical College Advisory Board member, and amateur musician

Dr. Richard Kogan, Director of Medicine and Music Initiative, psychiatrist, and accomplished pianist

Dr. Carlyle Miller, Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Equal Opportunity Programs at Weill Cornell Medical College, and published poet

Misheaila Neil, Director of Performing Arts Programming, Elmira College

Dr. David Shapiro, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Attending Psychiatrist, NewYork- Presbyterian Hospital, Chairman of the Music and Medicine Initiative, and amateur musician

Armand Ambrosini
Dr. Ambrosini, visiting assistant professor of music at the University of Oklahoma School of Music, is an accomplished recitalist, chamber musician and instructor. Ambrosini has performed solo recitals at Merkin Concert Hall, Humboldt State University and Plattsburgh State University. As a chamber musician, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, Washington Ballet Theatre and Washington Project for the Arts.
Ambrosini is a clarinetist with the Enid Symphony Orchestra of Enid, Oklahoma, Sequoia Chamber Players of Arcata, California, Chamber Musicians of the East and Composers’ Forum of Bennington, Vermont and a founding member of the Cordier Ensemble of New York City. He has been principal clarinetist with Philharmonia Virtuosi, Stamford, Bridgeport and New Haven Symphonies; and the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider.
Ambrosini authored Ned Rorem’s Song Cycle Ariel: A Musical Dramatization of five Poems by Sylvia Plath and recorded the text’s supplemental resource CD. in addition, he co-authored Introduction to Western Concert Music, an educational series that includes a comprehensive study aid and four compact disc collection of Western Concert Music.

Frank Daykin
Frank Daykin is equally known as soloist, collaborative pianist, teacher, lecturer and writer. He is particularly identified with the French repertoire, having performed the complete solo music of Ravel on Ravel’s own Erard piano in the Ravel home/museum in Montfort l’Amaury, France. His 29-year duo-piano partnership with Millette Alexander has produced two award-winning recordings and numerous performances in the US and abroad. Daykin is on the faculty of the Chamber Music Festival / Composers’ Forum of the East, where his insightful commentaries and lecture / demonstrations are the most popular events. Daykin is writing an encyclopedia of classical French song; and he has had two volumes of poetry published, many of the poems set to music by contemporary art song composers.

Judith Kellock
Soprano Judith Kellock, associate professor in the Department of Music at Cornell University and Cornell Council for the Arts' Interim Director, is an active performer in recital, chamber music and concert repertory, with a specialization in contemporary music. She is a founding member of Ensemble X, Cornell’s professional new-music ensemble and performs regularly on campus in recital, oratorio, and chamber music. She has been featured with orchestras throughout the United States, including the St. Louis Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Honolulu Symphony, and has performed in Italy, Greece, France and Belgium. Recent festival performances include Stockbridge Chamber Concerts, Windham Chamber Concerts, and SongFest, where she is on the performing faculty. Ms. Kellock has recordings on the Koch International, Albany, Gasparo, and Fleur de Son labels and gives frequent master classes in conjunction with her recitals world-wide.

Joanie MacKowski
Joanie Mackowski, assistant professor, Creative Writing Program at Cornell University and
Graduate Faculty Member, is the author of View From a Temporary Window (University of Pittsburgh Press 2010) and The Zoo (University of Pittsburgh Press 2002), which was awarded the Associated Writing Programs’ Award Series in Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Other awards include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Grant, and the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems appear in Best American Poetry 2007 and Best American Poetry 2009, The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, and in such journals as The Yale Review, Raritan, New England Review, Poetry, and others. Her third collection of poems, currently underway, explores lyric poetry from an ecocritical vantage point.

Dr. Richard Kogan has a distinguished career both as a concert pianist and as a psychiatrist. The New York Times praised him for his "eloquent, compelling, and exquisite playing" and the Boston Globe wrote, "Kogan has somehow managed to excel at the world's two most demanding professions." Dr. Kogan has gained renown for his lecture/recitals that explore the role of music in
healing and the influence of psychiatric and medical illnesses on the creative output of composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. He has given these presentations at music festivals, concert series, medical conferences, and scholarly symposia throughout the world. He performed Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and delivered an address entitled "The Power of Music in Healing Mind and Body" at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dr. Kogan has recorded, "Music and the Mind: The Life and Works of Robert Schumann" for Touchstar Productions. In a review of this DVD, Yo Yo Ma wrote: "I came away from this extraordinary lecture and performance deeply moved by a fascinating presentation that only Dr. Kogan, psychiatrist and concert pianist, can deliver...Through a unique combination of brilliant psychiatric insights and superb musicianship, my musical colleague, Richard Kogan, presents a rich multidimensional profile revealing some of the most intimate sources of Robert Schumann's enormous creativity, imagination and artistry." Dr. Kogan has won numerous honors including the Concert Artists Guild Award and first prize in the Chopin Competition of the Kosciuszko Foundation.

Dr. Kogan is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music Pre-college, Harvard College, and Harvard Medical School. He completed a psychiatry residency and academic fellowship at NYU. He has a private practice of psychiatry in New York City and is affiliated with Weill Cornell Medical College as Co-Director of its Human Sexuality Program. He is also Co-Chairman of the recently established Weill Cornell Music/Medicine Initiative.

"There is something almost superhuman about the range and technique of Bobby McFerrin," says Newsweek. "He sounds, by turns, like a blackbird, a Martian, an operatic soprano, a small child, and a bebop trumpet." But despite the undeniable uniqueness of his gift, Bobby's music is always accessible and inviting. When he invites his fans to sing along, as he almost always does, few can resist. Inclusiveness, play, and the universality of voices raised together in song are at the heart of Bobby's art.  Bobby McFerrin was exposed to a multitude of musical genres during his youth classical, R&B, jazz, pop and world musics. "When you grow up with that hodgepodge of music, it just comes out. It was like growing up in a multilingual house," he says. Bobby McFerrin continues to explore the musical universe, known and unknown. Drawing on all genres, demonstrating matchless improvisational skills, he never fails to dazzle. He never seems to run out of new ideas, and he loves having no clue what's going to happen next. Ask him where he went to school, and he just might tell you that he is a graduate of MSU: Making Stuff Up. "Music for me," McFerrin says, "is like a spiritual journey down into the depths of my soul. And I like to think we're all on a journey into our souls. What's down there? That's why I do what I do."

Dr. Carlyle Harvey Miller, Clinical Instructor in Medicine and Medical College alumnus, has been named the new associate dean of student affairs and equal opportunity programs at Weill Cornell Medical College. 

The appointment of Dr. Miller is a unique homecoming: his earliest link with Weill Cornell came in 1970, when, after graduating from Columbia University with a degree in biology, he was enrolled in the Traveler's Summer Research Fellowship Program, a program organized by the Office of Student Affairs and Equal Opportunity Programs for minority students to take part in summer research at the Medical College. "Participation in this program was, perhaps, the most significant event in my medical education," said Dr. Miller. "It was during this period that I recognized Cornell's commitment to excellence in three key areas of medicine: clinical care, medical research and student education." 

After graduating from the Medical College in 1975, Dr. Miller completed his residency at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell (then known as The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center), and a fellowship in gastroenterology at Weill Cornell's tri-institutional affiliate Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Miller has since served a number of academic and clinical appointments, most recently as chairman of the biomedical sciences and academic dean at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, and is currently assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.

Misheaila Neil, Director of Performing Arts Programming at Elmira College, received her BA degree from Hope College in 2002, and her Masters degree in Management from Elmira College in 2009. She directs the Encore Program at Elmira College, requiring all freshmen and sophomores to participate in 32 arts-related events/courses in their first two years.  This was initiated by President Thomas Meier a decade a go, and is currently administered by Ms. Neil.

David A. Shapiro, clinical professor of psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and Chairman of the Music and Medicine Initiative at Weill Cornell Medical College.  The initiative, spearheaded by David Shapiro, MD and Richard Kogan, MD, allows medical students to continue practicing music by offering quiet rehearsal spaces, performance venues and mentors from partner art institutions including The Julliard School and the 92nd Street Y. The program emphasizes continued academic excellence with the added opportunity for students to practice music as a way to balance a busy academic life, and includes specialized mentoring from faculty - both medical and musical.